CEOs the key to getting more women executives

More than half of the women surveyed by consultant Bain & Company and Chief Executive Women didn’t think of their company as a place where women could reach senior executive levels.
Photo: Jessica Shapiro

Men are nine times more likely to make it to top executive ranks even though women have outnumbered them at university for 30 years.

And more than half of the women surveyed by consultant Bain & Company and Chief Executive Women (CEW), in a report to be released today, didn’t think of their company as a place where women could reach senior executive levels.

“What’s really going to start a positive cycle is appointing more women," said Bain partner and report co-author Melanie Sanders.

She said it was something of a chicken-or-egg question: Should organisations initiate culture change through a raft of initiatives, or should they start appointing the women and it would happen?

AFR
AFR

“Women are saying ‘appoint the women’, they’re there," she said.

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The survey, which polled more than 800 professionals, found that women were far more likely to talk up their business to outsiders and remain loyal if more than a quarter of the executive team was women – more likely by a factor of five.

Overall, men were twice as likely (53 per cent) to promote their firm than women (27 per cent). Fewer than half of the surveyed women could see a long-term future with their firm, even if they were ambitious.

Ms Sanders said that it was critical for organisations to embrace different management styles. Last year’s survey found that men and women agreed their leadership styles were different. For women at the middle management level, many view their style as an inhibitor to promotion. That was compounded by concerns around starting a family, but Ms Sanders said that style was a more critical issue.

“Organisations need to be conscious that there are many leadership styles that are valuable. That needs to start from the CEO and executive team," she said.

Despite a recent surge in the number of women on the boards of ASX 200 companies, after corporate governance guidelines requiring the reporting of women executives and other advances like the Australian Institute of Company Directors’ women mentorship program, 40 per cent of ASX 100 companies do not have a diversity policy.

But CEW president and
QBE Insurance
Group chairwoman
Belinda Hutchinson
said that mandatory quotas for women at the executive level were a “last resort" only. “We are starting to see results and it’s about targets, I am not in favour of quotas," she said.

“It sends the wrong signals. Women don’t want to be seen to be there because there’s a quota."

Ms Hutchinson said that most companies were now setting three to five-year targets.

Woolworths has boosted women in senior executive roles by 70 per cent in the past eight years, reaching just over a quarter of positions.

That includes Julie Coates, who went from heading logistics to human resources to the company’s department store arm, Big W.

Ms Hutchinson also points to Commonwealth Bank of Australia with its group treasurer Lyn Cobley and wealth management head Annabel Spring.

“This research reinforces what companies already know," she said. “We would hope that it really pushes CEOs and their senior management teams to focus on this as a priority issue.

“The CEOs have got to start the ball rolling. You need managers who are prepared to back women and really give them an opportunity on the basis that they’ve got the talent."